Whether your aim is to sell online courses, become a consultant, or otherwise make money off of your smarts, being an expert in your field or industry is certainly important. But for most of the readers here on Learning Revolution, that’s already a done deal. They are experts. The bigger challenge right now is how to become known as an expert.

Believe me, this is familiar territory for me. Most of my work – and by extension, my income – is heavily dependent upon me being known as an expert – and that has to be based on a heck of a lot more than me just saying I’m an expert (which, of course, anyone can do).

Become Known as an Expert: 7 Focus Areas

So, with the hope that it will be of some help to readers here, I thought I’d share seven areas I focus on to make my expertise more visible. For my money, anyone who really wants to be known as expert – and increase the chances of pulling prospective customers to them – needs to be doing at least some of what follows. [Read more…]

Do you use or plan to use Webinars as a way to create and deliver online courses or other educational products?

If you do, you probably realize you are far from alone – the Web is jam packed with Webinars, many of them free, and a lot of them of pretty low quality. Whether you are trying to make money directly through selling Webinars or indirectly by using them as a means of lead generation, you need good ways to stand out from the crowd.

Running successful Webinars isn’t rocket science, but it does require some basic knowledge about the medium and attention to details. To help you out, here’s an excerpt from Chapter 6 of Leading the Learning Revolution, updated and adapted slightly to reflect my ongoing experience with Webinars. [Read more…]

Want to learn more about how Webinars can help you generate more sales for your education business?

Looking for an example of hugely successful – and profitable – Webinar-based event?

If you have read, or are at least moderately familiar with Leading the Learning Revolution, you know that it talks quite a bit not only about selling Webinars as educational products but also about selling with Webinars – that is, using Webinars as a way to generate leads and convert them into customers.

You may also know that Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner was one of the many great people interviewed when writing Leading the Learning Revolution (Here’s Mike talking about virtual conferences.)

Interested in launching a dynamic social learning experience for your audience?

Want to make the leap from social media not just as a tool for communication, but as a platform for leadership?

Then you will definitely want to tune into this episode of Learning Revolution with Maddie Grant. In it we discuss the new Private Community Management Certificate Program launched by Maddie’s firm SocialFish and dig into social as an approach to both learning and leading.

We also talk about how Maddie made the leap from being an association employee with a blog on the side to being a successful social media entrepreneur, teacher, and leader.

Get those earphones in a comfortable position, turn up the volume, and listen in!

Love ’em or hate ’em, Webinars are a fact of life these days, and they are an essential part of the Learning Revolutionary’s toolbox. So, wouldn’t you like to ensure the Webinars you deliver are as good as possible?

In this episode, Webinar expert Wayne Turmel discusses what tends to make Webinars less than successful in many instances, and what you can do to ensure you rise above the fray. You’ll get some great tips and also find out what the heck the “hrair limit” is!

02:25 – Addressing the “elephant in the room” – a lot of Webinars are just plain bad. Wayne discusses a survey he did in which the word participants used most commonly to describe Webinars was “suck.”(To be fair, these were marketing Webinars, not training/education Webinars. Of course – in my experience – there’s a good chance most training/education Webinars wouldn’t fair much better.)

03:45 – What tends to make Webinars be perceived as so bad? Wayne notes that fewer than 20% of people receive any training on using Webinar tools effectively before presenting to “innocent victims.”